This week I came back from my detox experiment (you can read about it here) and immediately started breaking my own rules. Opened Discord at 3pm, played a game in the morning…
And yet I still got more done on the book than any normal week before.
What I used to do
I had a 4 hour block on my calendar called “Work on anatomy book.” It seemed like a big and difficult task, so every day I pushed it back. 9am became 11am became 2pm, and by the time I finally got to it I was already frustrated with myself for being late by my own schedule. Then after an hour or two of struggling I’d give up and decide to try again tomorrow, today is not the day.
This went on for weeks.
What actually works
During the detox I had no schedule at all. I worked on a page, got tired or frustrated, walked around the house, cleaned my room, found nothing interesting to do, and came back to the book. Then repeated that the whole day.
When I came back to normal life I started paying attention to why that worked. And I think I figured it out.
When I hit a difficult problem in the book and step away from it, my brain keeps working on it in the background without me asking it to. I’ll come back after eating lunch or doing some other task and the problem that looked daunting before suddenly looks approachable.
The whole day ends up being spent in work mode this way, even if I’m not always at the desk. Now I don’t schedule my work, I schedule only the one-off tasks so I can do them on breaks. I’m actually more motivated to do those tasks now because they feel like an escape, but then returning to the book doesn’t feel difficult anymore because it already solved itself while I was doing something else.
The break matters though
Not all breaks are equal. Getting up from the desk and doing something completely different works. YouTube, Twitter or chatting with friends online does not. I think the reason is that those fill your head with new stuff to process, so when you come back you’re starting from zero again because the background work your brain was doing got interrupted.
I also noticed I focus much easier in my sketchbook than at my PC. On paper there’s nothing to click away to. On the computer the same desk where I draw is also where I play games and watch YouTube, just knowing the option is there makes it harder to focus.
What I’d suggest
Stop following productivity advice for a few days and just pay attention to what you actually do naturally. You might find out you get more done by working with your intuitive patterns instead of forcing yourself into someone else’s idea of what focus looks like.
Yes, I’m aware that’s still advice.
